The Public Editor

You’re on deadline, and you want to know if the new report that plopped on your desk comes from an organization with an agenda. You have a simple question you want answered fast, or a complex project you want to talk through. You’re new to the beat and having trouble getting officials, or middle schoolers, to talk to you. Or you’ve been on the beat forever and are dying for a new take on the snow-day story, the budget-rollout story, or the perennial story about college-admissions angst.

Whatever your needs, the public editor will be there to help.

If you need to workshop a story idea, contact EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond. If you have an urgent need on a tight deadline, contact her by phone at 702-370-0017. The service is free and confidential.

Recent Posts

The public school population in Minnesota, as in many other states, is becoming more diverse by race and ethnicity. But the teacher workforce? Not so much. About one-third of Minnesota students are non-white, compared with roughly 5 percent of teachers, as Faiza Mahamud and MaryJo Webster report for the Star Tribune newspaper.

Education reporters and progressive Twitter denizens are probably familiar with the graphic. Three people of different heights are trying to look over a fence. In one frame, labeled “equality,” each is given a box of the same height, leaving the shortest still unable to see over the fence.

In the other, labeled “equity,” each is given a box of different sizes so they’re at equal heights.

Not long ago, a student who got into a fight at school would likely face an automatic suspension. Now, in schools across the country, that student might be back in class the next day.

That change is part of an expansive effort to rethink the way public schools respond to misbehavior. In many schools, punitive measures like suspension and expulsion are being replaced with alternative strategies that aim to keep students in the classroom and address underlying issues like trauma and stress.

Barbara Laker isn’t an education reporter. She doesn’t have a long list of teachers’ phone numbers in her contacts. So, it’s amazing that she was able to find and convince 24 teachers and other school employees from 19 elementary schools to swab pipes, drinking fountains and suspicious patches of black on classroom walls.